Education  July 7, 2006

UNC to unveil Monfort Institute

GREELEY – Winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award find themselves in an awkward position.

The Baldrige model is so rigorous that the selected few have typically achieved just 60 to 70 percent of what’s possible on the scale.

The quandary has inspired one of the Baldrige winners, the University of Northern Colorado’s Monfort College of Business, to explore the path to higher ground.

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This month the Monfort College of Business, a 2004 Baldrige designee, will launch the Monfort Institute. The program is designed not only to guide Baldrige winners to greater success, but school officials think it could also be the nexus of research and advancement in organizational quality.

In its first order of business, the Monfort Institute will conduct its inaugural Monfort Institute Summit, July 17-18 at the Ritz-Carlton in Beaver Creek. The summit will draw representatives from previous Baldrige Award winners, such as Boeing Co., OMI and the host Ritz-Carlton as well as highly regarded researchers in the field from the University of Minnesota, University of Indiana and University of Cincinnati.

 “Once you achieve excellence, what does life after that look like?´ said John Latham, director of the Monfort Institute. “That’s really what we’re initially focused on.”

As a first-time gathering, the summit will attempt to establish the groundwork for the Monfort Institute.

On the first day of the summit, steps will include taking an inventory of “dilemmas” faced by management at the Baldrige Award companies who are trying to improve on their previous success.

“Then we will try to take these dilemmas and analyze and understand what questions they have and what knowledge gaps they have,” Latham said.

Next, the managers and academics will try to design a research agenda that can help to address the issues.

“Day two is a little more dicey,” Latham said. “That’s when we’ll try to figure out, how are we going to do this?”

In its first year, the summit will be intentionally lean. Attendance was capped at 40, in order to keep discussion at an efficient rate.

But in subsequent years, the Monfort Institute Summit “can be quite large,” as the format of the summit evolves into a more conventional seminar and speaker gathering, Latham said. The annual summits will allow the Monfort Institute to continue to modify the research agenda.

Over time, the Institute will be a clearinghouse for data and analysis on organizational quality. Latham and Monfort College Dean Joe Alexander envision that businesses interested in the Baldrige model as well as academics can eventually log onto the Monfort Institute’s Web site to access reports and statistics yielded by the research.

Rewards from Institute for college

The Monfort Institute is backed by a gift, which Monfort College Dean Joe Alexander described as “six figures per year over the next five years,” from the Monfort family. The gift is on top of the landmark $10.5 million gift from Ken Monfort and the Monfort Family Foundation in 1998. The Monfort Foundation is now run by Ken’s sons, Dick and Charlie Monfort.

Rewards from the Monfort Institute could be manifold for the college.

Connections to both business and academic figures who take part in the Baldrige-based program are expected to generate speaking engagements at the Monfort College, which is fast gaining a reputation as a top undergraduate business program. Alexander said he already expects two high-profile speakers to come to Greeley as a result of the Monfort Institute ties.

The program also provides recruiting power for the school’s “executive professor” program, which features professors and lecturers with business backgrounds.

“We see a niche that’s not being filled,” Latham said of the Institute. “And we see an opportunity to have a huge return on our investment by leveraging these two stakeholder groups (Balridge winners and academic researchers).”

Attention gained from the Balridge Award has been measurable at UNC. The Monfort College saw freshman enrollment surge by 31 percent, and the school has been able to toughen entrance requirements. Donations to the business college since the award was announced are up 89 percent.

Meanwhile, the Monfort College is attempting to practice what it’s facilitating.

When the program won the Baldrige Award, Alexander said the judges gave the Monfort College high marks in roughly 100 of the measurement categories, but still identified 41 where it had “opportunities for improvement.”

“We’re just not as advanced as we should be,” he said. “This is not an application process designed to have someone come in and say, ‘You’re doing a great job, let’s have a party.'”

GREELEY – Winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award find themselves in an awkward position.

The Baldrige model is so rigorous that the selected few have typically achieved just 60 to 70 percent of what’s possible on the scale.

The quandary has inspired one of the Baldrige winners, the University of Northern Colorado’s Monfort College of Business, to explore the path to higher ground.

This month the Monfort College of Business, a 2004 Baldrige designee, will launch the Monfort Institute. The program is designed not only to guide Baldrige winners to greater success, but school officials think it could also be the…

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